Freedom Writers
MOVIE
Freedom Writers tries to be the literary version of Stand and Deliver, but don't dismiss it just because it doesn't match the emotion or capture the inner-city life as poignantly as that 1988 Oscar-nominated film. Though it lacks the singular student presence that Lou Diamond Phillips brought to Jaime Escalte's calculus class, Writers still delivers, on the shoulders of two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank.
Inspired by real events, Writers depicts a mid-90s Long Beach, Calif., who says Snowp turf) tarnished by the violence of the Rodney King riots. Enter Erin Growell (swank), a bright-eyed, Starbucks-sipping first-time teacher from the burbs (at one point she tells a student to "striptribin"), prepared to hand out copies of Homer's Odyssey to her students, most of whom hover around a fifth grade reading level. Like the other teacher-inspired-student flicks, 'Miss G' comes to realize that earning the respect of her students requires more than a passing on of comma usage rules, and through the adaptation of her methods to match her streetwise freshmen, Room 203 slowly but surely becomes a safe haven from the outside
maelstrom of gang violence, dilapidated neighborhoods and disenchanted faculty members.
Swank pulls off the teacher look by trading in her Million Dollar Baby boxing gloves for chalk and conservative skirts, and she's able to channel the raw energy she brought with a right hook into the more refined (but only slightly)
classroom.
Hindering Swank's performance is an average screenplay more insistent on verbally force-feeding the urban plight than visually developing it, rendering the incessant "you don't know what it's like out there" rants cliched.
★★★
All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone MUSIC by Explosions in the Sky
Explosions in the Sky have made a name for themselves over the last few years with their ambient anthems. Strictly instrumental, Explosions rely on the music to paint an emotional landscape.
Two years in the making All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone finds the group continuing their signature sound. The album starts strongly with "The Birth and Death of the Day" with its crashing emotions and blistering energy. The album remains pretty good, but nothing comes close to topping the opening track.
Like all ambient music, it can listen listeners easily. How many seven-minute songs can you hear without losing interest? Perhaps CDs and mp3s are the wrong format for ambient music. It seems more suited to a live setting, when the sound can
swallow you, or a movie in which the music helps to bring emotion to a story.
Both of those things seem to work for Explosions, as they wrote the music for Friday Night Lights and frequently tour. They'll be at the Bottleneck on March 31, where you'll have a chance to truly understand what their music is all about.
★★★ Trevan McGee
ALL RATINGS ARE OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE STARS. ★★★★☆
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